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“It is,” Nesta answered for him. “I’ve never seen him so fidgety.”
Azriel glowered at his friend. But he admitted, “They seem to want to be near each other.”
Bryce nodded. “When I landed on that lawn, they instantly reacted when they were close together.”
“Like calls to like,” Nesta mused. “Plenty of magical things react to one another.”
“This was unique. It felt like … like an answer. My sword blazed with light. That dagger shone with darkness. Both of them are crafted of the same black metal. Iridium, right?” She jerked her chin to Azriel, to the dagger at his side. “Ore from a fallen meteorite?”
Azriel’s silence was confirmation enough.
“I told you guys back in that dungeon,” Bryce went on. “There’s literally a prophecy in my world about my sword and a dagger reuniting our people. When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be.”
Nesta frowned deeply. “And you truly think this is that particular dagger?”
“It checks too many boxes not to be.” Bryce lifted a still-bloody hand, and she didn’t miss the way they both tensed. But she furled her fingers and said, “I can feel them. It gets stronger the closer I get to them.”
“Then don’t get too close,” Nesta warned, and Bryce lowered her hand.
Bryce surveyed the carved walls, pivoting. “These reliefs tell a narrative, too, you know.”
Nesta peered up at the images: the three dancing Fae in the foreground, the stars overhead, the scattered islands. The mountain island with the castle atop its highest peak. And again, always the reminder of that suffering underworld beneath it. Memento mori. Et in Avallen ego. “What sort of narrative?”
Bryce shrugged. “If I had a few weeks, I could walk the whole length and analyze it.”
“But you don’t know our history,” Nesta said. “It’d have no context for you.”
“I don’t need context. Art has a universal language.”
“Like the one tattooed on your back?” Nesta said.
All right. Their turn to ask questions. “Your friend—Amren. She said it was the same as the language in some book?”
Azriel asked, stone-faced, “What do you call it in your world—that language?”
Bryce shook her head. “I don’t know. I told the truth earlier. My friend and I got … We had a lot to drink one night.” And smoked a fuck-ton of mirthroot, but they didn’t need to know that, or need an explanation about the drugs of Midgard. “I barely remember it. She said it meant Through love, all is possible.”
Nesta clicked her tongue, but not with disdain. Something like understanding.
Bryce went on, “She claimed she picked the alphabet out of a book in the tattoo shop, but … I don’t think that was the case.” She needed to steer this away from the Horn. Quickly. Especially since Nesta had been the one they’d called to inspect her tattoo.
Azriel asked, “How did your friend know the language?”
“I still don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure out what she knew for months now.”
“Why not just ask her?” Nesta countered.
“Because she’s dead.” The words came out flatter than Bryce had intended. But something cracked in her to say them, even if she’d lived with that reality every day for more than two years now. “The Asteri had her assassinated, then had it framed as a demonic murder. She was getting close to discovering some major truth about the Asteri and our world, so they had her killed.”
“What truth?” This from Azriel.
“I’ve been trying to uncover that, too,” Bryce said.
“Was the language of your tattoo part of it?” Azriel pressed.
“I don’t know—I only got as far as learning that she’d uncovered what the Asteri truly are, what they do to the worlds they conquer. If I ever get home …” Her heart became unbearably heavy. “If I ever get home, maybe I’ll learn the rest.”
Silence fell. Then Nesta nodded to the three dancing Fae figures above Bryce. “So what does that mean, then? If you don’t need the context.”
